beyond that, these agricultural and energy products -- and especially the energy products -- are inputs to other productive processes, so other manufacturers have to use these things to produce other goods, and therefore because they were suffering cost increases, the prices of these other manufactured goods went up. schoumacher: the american economy was like a great fighter that had been stunned by an unexpected one-two punch, the food and energy supply shocks. this economic combination created something new, supply shock inflation and recession. people called it stagflation, and it was to hammer at the american economy for years to come. why did it so confound economists of the day? we put that question to economic analyst richard gill. in the old days, you used to be able to divide economists into two groups, those who worried about stagnation and those who worried about inflation. what the food and energy shocks of the early 1970s proved was that both were right. economics can be a bit unsettling that way. everybody's worries can come true. technically speaking, what was happening w